The Pain Was The Proof

Most people spend their lives running from pain.
I run toward it.
Like someone picking up a lover at an airport.
I hold the pain close. Let it swirl around me.
Its familiar heaviness wraps me like a weighted blanket—comforting and secure.

I carry it in silence.
As though it’s precious.
A secret just for me.
Like a hidden garden I visit with a flashlight in the dark.

I study it.
Look at it from every possible angle.
Mesmerized by its shape.
The way it sneaks into the corners of everything.
Like it’s observing me.
Fascinated by my life.
Begging to be included.

I dissect it.
Uncovering the origins of my hurts—
many of which I’ve caused myself.
I become a scientist, tracing pain back to its smallest elements,
tracking its movement through my mind, body, and spirit.

I’m friends with it.
Pain has a key to my home.
It slips in without knocking.
I pour it tea, and we just sit in silence together.
A safe, quiet calmness existing under the hurt.

Pain has been my best teacher.
I’ve learned thousands of lessons from it—
some that didn’t serve me,
many that did.

I can describe pain with brutal clarity and honesty.
I know it well.
I can’t tell you my favorite color,
but I can tell you about pain’s texture.

It’s rough, like sandpaper on my heart—
sometimes shredding the smooth muscle,
sometimes wedging tiny grains of itself into every heartbeat,
an echo of ache reverberating through my veins.

It flows through me, twirling around my spine,
jumping up and down my vertebrae like it’s playing hopscotch at recess.
It tightens my jaw, clenching my teeth like I’m a wild animal about to strike.
It lifts my shoulders toward my ears, like I was frozen mid-shrug,
then it settles on my chest—
constricting each breath
like a python wrapped around my ribs.
Refusing to let go,
but never swallowing me whole.

Somewhere along the way, pain became my protector.
My bodyguard.
My safety net.
I know how to traverse it and still find softness.

Thanks to trauma, I’ve spent most of my life numb.
Not feeling anything.
I thought that kept me safe.
Made me tough.
I thought that was how you navigated a cruel world.

But pain broke through the numbness.
It became a friend—because it let me feel something.
It stopped my days from blurring into one another.
From survival mode being my only mode.
It sounds backwards, but pain gave me something to look forward to.

Pain became proof I wasn’t broken.
That I wasn’t too far gone.
That there was still hope for me.

I doubt many people say this out loud,
but pain sometimes feels like hope.
When you’ve been checked out of your own life for decades,
feeling anything is amazing—even if it hurts.

As long as I could feel pain, I knew I was alive.
Not intellectually—in my body.
Pain was how I felt my own aliveness.
It’s how I learned to trust myself again.
Because if I can hold pain without it breaking me—
what else can I hold?

Maybe I can hold joy.
Maybe I can sit in goodness and delight without flinching.
Without running away.
Without hiding.

Maybe I can find space.
Like a tiny utility closet inside me
that I can fill with beautiful things.
Maybe I can even build a doggie door—
so goodness can come and go as it pleases.
Maybe one day, I can even give joy a key to my home,
and serve it tea when it comes to visit.

I know there’s more aliveness waiting to be felt.
That pain is only one end of the experience.
Joy is at the other.

So I choose to keep walking toward joy.
Letting it sneak into the corners of my life.
Even if I don’t fully trust it yet.
Because walking toward joy doesn’t mean leaving pain behind.
It gets to walk with me.
And hold my hand.
Like a friend I never knew I needed,
but one I am so glad to know.